Prophecy Update Newsletter
IN TODAY'S NEWSLETTER...
The Turn of the Tide: Part I - by Pete Garcia - http://rev310.com/2019/01/the-turn-of-the-tide-part-i
The Greek philosopher Aristotle once said that tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society. My understanding is that he is using these two virtues (tolerance and apathy) with a negative connotation in mind. Meaning that they are the predominant attitudes of a society on its way to decline and ultimately, extinction. Meaning that any nation who tolerates or is apathetic to that which is antithetical to existence is destined for destruction. While this article is primarily aimed at my American audience, there are two truth-isms I want to convey to everyone. The first is that almost every generation has thought they were the last generation. Imagine you were a Roman citizen alive when the barbarians were at the gates and the Empire began to fall apart. Presumably, this scenario would seem every bit as disturbing as an erupting Mt. Vesuvius, where the only thing on the horizon was smoke and fire. Imagine you lived somewhere in Eastern Europe, or perhaps the Mediterranean in the pre-800s. One minute you are enjoying a quiet life in your town or village, and the next it is being levelled by Moslem hordes or Nordic Vikings. Families are torn apart and either killed or sold into slavery. Everything you had worked for was either taken from you, or being set on fire. Again, your way of life has just come to an abrupt and radical end. Imagine being a European peasant or commoner during the years of the Bubonic Plague. Life I imagine would have seemed very apocalyptic. How about being a Jew, Waldensian, or Anabaptist during the height of the Catholic Inquisitions? How many countless hundreds of thousands were dragged out of their houses, imprisoned, tortured, and killed in the name of the same God you worship. What about those countless millions affected by war, whether it be the American Civil War, World War I, or World War II? We here in the 21st-century New World have had the luxury of foregoing much of what has plagued mankind throughout most of its existence, that primarily being misery. It seems foreign to us; as if it were some long lost word from a dead language, we can no longer pronounce, much less define. We have grown up in the modern era with all its trappings (electricity, televisions, air conditioning, fast food, etc.), and somehow reconstruct reality to think that it has always been this way. Even our wars today are fought in places most Americans could not even find on a map. Modern academics pick through and either criticize or dismiss historical events as mere footnotes, and miss the reality of the pain, suffering, and misery that often accompanied our predecessors. Hardship was always on them like a stench they could not wash away. However, it more often than not, produced a people that came to accept hardship as rite of passage to be embraced, rather than shunned. We are not those people. Corresponding to that is the second truth-ism. Every kingdom, whether it be a nation or an empire, only has a certain amount of time and space set aside for it. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings Acts 17:26 Every nation/kingdom/empire, from the Sumerians to the Americans, has preappointed times and boundaries set aside for it. It does not matter what a nation does to try to extend or stave off that ending (petrodollar anyone?), when the time comes, their fate is sealed. With that said, however, there is one kind of exception shown to us in Scripture, that being Nineveh. Remember God's reaction when everyone from the king of Nineveh on down repented in reaction to the prophet Jonah's message of coming destruction? Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it. Jonah 3:10 Granted, their destruction still came around a hundred-years later as prophesied by the prophet Nahum, but at least that generation (Jonah's) was able to assuage God's wrath due to their sincere repentance. However, Nineveh seems to be the exception, not the norm. Many secular historians and academics tend to dismiss the divinely preappointed view as nothing more than cyclical and natural. They have catalogued the normal lifecycle of an empire as being:
John J. Xenakis's Theory on Generational Dynamics further develops this by adding to the overall cyclical nature of empires, the periods of crisis. What this means is that corresponding to the overall accepted cycle of empires (as seen above), that every 80-years (plus or minus ten years), you had massive, genocidal wars. He distinguishes between the mid-cycle wars (those wars which we choose to fight in usually a limited capacity), and the crisis wars (those genocidal wars we are inescapably drawn into). Therefore, that 80-year timeline looks as such: (+/-20 years crisis)- (Mid-cycle war) --60 years-- (+/- 20 years crisis) - (Crisis War) 80-years is significant, because this is right around the time that all of the previous generation has died off, and the next generation has no physical memory of the last, horrific, genocidal event. Thus, as the atheist George Santayana once noted, those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. Empires may in fact run cyclically as noted above. But they do so only because God has already set the boundaries by a) limiting man's life to 70-80 years (Psalm 90:10), and b) given us the pattern by which a nation assures its own destruction (Genesis 12:2-3, Romans 1:16-31), and c) the order and time for which they will come and go (Daniel 2:31-45, 7-9). Since the Bible predates Aristotle, Carroll Quigley, Santayana, John Xenakis, and all other historians and academics, we see that they are then simply confirming what Scripture has already said would happen. Nations (by that I also mean empires and kingdoms) cannot go beyond what God has already foreordained. My earnest hope here is not to come off as the perpetual doom and gloomer, but to project a sense of soberness and even optimism. Those two might not sound like they go together, but I suppose it depends on the audience. For those who understand the times in which we live, there is strong sense of optimism. That is because there is the realization that we are in fact, the last generation. So how do I qualify my statement that we are the last generation, when I had just previously mentioned that every generation believed they were the last? Two words... Convergence & Israel So if my next statement seems bold, so be it. Our nation is doomed. The United States, like the Babylonians of yore, has been weighed in the scales and been found wanting. The US has promulgated a number of severely grievous sins for which the world has followed our lead. At the very top of that list, is our legalization of the killing of the most innocent from among us, the unborn. If just one man's blood (Abel's) cried out to God from the ground (Gen. 4:10), imagine how loud the cries of the 60M+ dead babies are. Not only that, but we have become the most hopelessly materialistic, hedonistic, apostate, post-Christian, and pagan nation on the planet. I do not need to sell any of you on this, simply turn on the news and see for yourself. It is not just me saying this, but men like Peter Marshall, Dave Wilkerson, and many others for the past 70 years have been warning us that judgment is coming. So what is next? At present, we are in the final stages of being given over to a reprobate mind. I believe that God gave us a brief reprieve with the election of Donald Trump. However, God did not give us Trump to right all the wrongs, and we were foolish to think so. God is using Trump at present to put Israel back on the center stage of world events. Since there is no America-like world superpower found in the pages of Scripture, something must cause the United States to decrease, while this beast from the sea increases (Rev. 13:1-2). I believe that something to be the Rapture of the Church. What other event could remove the Bride of Christ (the blood bought Church), which in turns removes the need of a Restrainer, while simultaneously reordering all the world powers in the blink of an eye? It is my earnest belief that after the Rapture of the Church, the US will be in chaos and ruin. What remains of the US, will be systematically dismantled and our remains divided amongst the final kingdom of man upon the earth. I know what some of you are thinking. Come on Pete quit being such a sensationalist! People have been saying that forever and still nothing has happened! I know my regular readers will already know which Scripture deals with this reasoning. For those who do not, listen to what the Apostle Peter said about those people championing the lunacy of the normalcy bias, Knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation." 2 Peter 3:3-4 At some point, God's longsuffering will have reached its limit. At present, we are 2,000+ years into God's longsuffering; I cannot imagine it continuing for much longer. Aside from Israel during the reign of King Solomon, the US has been the most blessed nation to ever exist. The fact that He has not already come back and initiated the end-events, is perhaps even more frightening. The non-intervention of God bears very heavy interest, and He is greatly to be feared when He does nothing. He moves in long orbits, out of sight and sound. But He always arrives. Nothing can arrest the judgment of the Cross, nothing shake the judgment-seat of Christ (P.T. Forsyth in The Justification of God). The other factor for the delayed destruction of the United States is so that technology can catch up with where God said the world would be at the appointed time. We know that this final, ten-nation (or region) confederation will arise in the last days and that ultimately, just one man, the Antichrist, will come to head this confederacy. He will be able to do what no other leader in all of history could do, completely control the earth. This man is also known as the rider on the white horse (Rev. 6:1-2), the little horn (Dan. 8:9), the man of sin (2 Thess. 2:4), and the Beast (Rev. 13:1-2). Here is what the Bible states he will do,
Every previous tyrant, conqueror, and would be despot that has ever existed (Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.) have had this authority granted to them on a limited basis, but there were all restrained to a certain degree. This final leader, Mr. Antichrist, will have full backing, power, and authority to wage total war and total control over everyone economically, militarily, and politically. In other words, he has the power to square the circle (do the impossible) because he will have the full support of Satan and every dark principality in existence. Remember what Satan told Jesus during the Wilderness temptation, Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, "All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Luke 4:5-6 So how do we get from where we are today, to that day as described in the Bible? Next up, Part II Iran Fires Rocket at Golan, Intelligence Minister: "This is Open Confrontation" - By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz - www.breakinhisraselnews.com "Pay them according to their deeds, their malicious acts; according to their handiwork pay them, give them their deserts." Psalms 28:4 (The Israel Bible™) A daring Israeli daylight airstrike led to Iranian forces in Syria firing a rocket at the Golan leading an Israeli minister to call this "open confrontation with Iran." The Israeli government confirmed they carried out a daring daytime airstrike against Iranian military targets in Syria on Sunday. The IDF stated that approximately ten targets were hit including weapons warehouses at the Damascus International Airport and, in other locations, an Iranian intelligence site and an Iranian training camp. The Israeli strikes also targeted multiple Syrian surface-to-air missile batteries. Shortly after the airstrikes, IDF Iron Dome anti-missile systems shot down a projectile fired at Israel from Syria on Sunday. The rocket fire was observed by Israeli civilians skiing on the slopes of Mount Hermon. The IDF blamed Iranian Al Quds forces for the missile fired at Israel. The Russian military alleged additional Israeli airstrikes were carried out in the early morning on Monday. "On January 21, 2019, between 2:11 a.m. and 2:56 a.m. the Israeli Air Defense carried out three airstrikes on Syria's territory from the western, southwestern, and southern directions," the Russian military statement said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported missile strikes near the Damascus airport and in areas around the capital saying the missiles hit apparent weapons depots of Iranian forces and Lebanon's Shi'ite militant group Hizballah. 11 casualties were reported. Intelligence Minister Israel Katz discussed the recent exchange of fire on Monday morning in an interview with Army Radio. "This was a clear message to the Iranians," Katz said in the interview. "The policy has changed. This is an open confrontation with Iran. When we need to step it up, we'll step it up." "We won't allow their entrenchment in Syria," he said. Katz emphasized that the missile shot at Israel from Syria a direct attack. "Whoever attacks us will pay a heavy price," he warned. It is interesting to note that a Mahan Air flight from Tehran to Damascus approaching Damascus at 1:30 PM turned around and headed away from the city. These flights listed as civilian air carriers have been accused by Israel and the U.S. of being used to carry weapons and military personnel for Syria and Hezbollah. The message was not lost on Iran as Brig. Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh, Commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force, addressed the media on Monday. "Our current and future generations [in the air force] are impatient and fully ready to confront the Zionist regime and eliminate it from the Earth," Nasirzadeh said, adding, "Our future generations are learning required know-how for the promised day to destroy Israel." Nearing Midnight: 2019 Prophecy Prospective - Part III - Terry James - https://www.raptureready.com/category/nearing-midnight/ While the world at large might have some concerns about the human condition, there is scant recognition of truly impending doom for their judgment-bound planet. Certainly, there is no understanding, or even desire to discern, things to come that are foretold in God's prophetic Word. Sadly, the same has to be said for much of the Church today-born-again believers in the Lord of Heaven, who is on the very brink of calling that body to Himself in the Rapture. Judgment and wrath are just a heartbeat away for the rebellious creature called man, whether in death or in going into the Tribulation era to come. It is vital that the word go forth; Jesus Christ is about to be revealed, as Jesus Himself made clear in His days of Noah, days of Lot prophecy (Matthew 24:36-42; Luke 17:26-30). At the heart of this dire event at some point in the perhaps very near future are the words Paul wrote. I urge the reader to carefully study the entire condemnation the Holy Spirit gave the great apostle to forewarn of the reasons that bring the Almighty's wrath upon rebellious earth-dwellers-the term the KJV uses to define those who turn against God. I'm referring to a passage in Romans beginning with 1:21. We will look at this condemnation of rebellion against the Lord in a few of its parts. Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools... For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient. (Romans 1: 21-22; 26-28) Now, I know that in today's reprobate vernacular what I'm saying here is considered "hate speech." But the God of Heaven does not engage in humanistic political correctness. He speaks plainly to truth. He has said ithat when a people, a society, or a culture reaches this point, He turns them over to a reprobate mind. That is, He lets them go insane with their sinful rebellion, which is exactly where determination to go in the opposite direction from the Creator's will for humanity leads-precisely where this generation finds itself. History records the unyielding accuracy of God's Word. Homosexuality and its many versions and perversions have been at the heart of every great, earthly empire as they came to their end. Ridding encumbrances to convenience of pleasurable indulgences-like removing inhibiting factors such as unwanted children through abortion and/or idolatrous sacrifice-have marked their descent into madness. Through observation of the perversions being foisted by the LGBTQ forces upon all of American society, we can see, under God's enlightening Word, the proverbial handwriting on the wall. With the murder of more than 60 million babies in their mothers' wombs since 1973, in America alone, the world is under the looming judgment of a righteous God, a loving Lord who has moved Heaven and Hell, having sent His only begotten Son to die on a cruel cross, to bring about redemption from the sin that holds this rebellious nation and world in satanic bondage. So, I view all that is wrapped up in the homosexual-thus incorrigibly rebellious-movement as the third most prominent indicator of where this generation stands as it moves deeper into 2019. Finally, I come to the number-one indicator, in my view, that America and the world's appointment with the Supreme's court is drawing much nearer than most might think. We go back to the point with which we began this three-part series. We use the word "convergence" to express the urgency of the prophetic hour. That is, those who think and write about Bible prophecy yet future from the Pre-Trib perspective use the term in trying to forewarn that Christ's call to His Church looks to be very near. Many who study and teach Bible prophecy from the pre-Trib view are convinced that it is this very matter-convergence of practically every signal given for the end of the age by Jesus and the prophets-that most profoundly points to where this generation sits upon Heaven's prophetic timeline. We chronicle the signs of the times daily in our books, websites, TV broadcasts, and nationwide radio programs. Convergence of all the indicators is front and center. And, nobody is paying much attention, in terms of the vast numbers who claim Christianity as their belief system. One Scripture that I believe captures the essence of our exact prophetic hour is given by Jesus, Himself: "Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh" (Matthew 24:44). Daily Jot: Prophecy and truth of the modern church - Bill Wilson - www.dailyjot.com "More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this 'hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. "In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? l am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists. There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. "In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example, they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. "Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo...If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust." These words were excerpted from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s letter to fellow clergymen from the Birmingham Jail nearly 56 years ago. Looking back, they are as prophetic today as they were truth in April 1963. As Romans 12:21 exhorts "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good," the "Church" needs to wake up because what King wrote is happening. Daily Devotion: The Path to Joy - By Greg Laurie - www.harvest.org In Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. -Psalm 16:11 Throughout Scripture, we see how God used men and women in the corridors of power to influence leaders. Daniel was taken along with other Israelites into the captivity of Babylon, but he had great influence on King Nebuchadnezzar. We know that Joseph had great influence on the Pharaoh. And Esther, because of her influence with King Ahasuerus, was able to save her entire nation. As believers we should be asking, "Lord, where do you want me to be?" He may put you in a corridor of power. Or, He might have you laboring in relative obscurity. Wherever you are, you need to use your influence for His glory. Ask yourself, "Am I going to enjoy life in my own way, or am I going to employ my life serving God and others?" Serving the Lord is the most joyful thing you can do. The psalmist David wrote, "In [His] presence is fullness of joy; at [His] right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Psalm 16:11 NKJV). Those of us who serve the Lord have discovered a secret. Jesus said it very clearly: "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35 NKJV). Another way to translate blessed is "happy." If you want to be a happy person, then be a giving person. If you want to be an unhappy person, then be a selfish person. If you want to be happy, then be generous. If you want to be miserable, then be stingy. Be generous with everything God gives you. Be generous with your time. Be generous with your money. Be generous with whatever is at your disposal. Are you going to enjoy your life or employ your life? If you employ your life for the glory of God, then you will enjoy your life as never before. 
FROM THE HEART
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